ChrisJenTravel.com – Honeymoon Trek

New Zealand was amazing. We had plenty of time to see most all of the two islands and more than enough time to drive through the mountains and past endless farms and herds of sheep. We were ready for a change of pace and excited to leave for the last leg of our trip.

The flight that we had pre-booked said that we had one layover in Dubai – a middle eastern country. We boarded the plane and (our huge mistake) had just never thought to add up the exact hours (time change and all). We were wowed by the inside of the Emirates plane – the economy looked more like first class – hot towels, personal TVs with video games, huge seats. The stewardess came by and gave us a menu of the meals and drinks and they were undoubtedly the best gourmet meals we had had the entire trip and sounded nicer than any we could afford in Europe. We sat back and with a sigh of relief, tuned into up-to-date movies, shows and music videos – almost basking in the small luxuries that we had gone without for so long. But, of course there’s a gruesome catch.

After buckling our belts and laughing that we wouldn’t want to get off the plane we noticed the plane’s course. We were headed from Auckland to Brisbane Austraila….not Dubai. Then we noticed another stop in Singapore, then Dubai, then Milan Italy and FINALLY Rome!!! So, although the tickets only listed 1 stop, we actually had 4. We sat and added the hours. 32. 32 hours straight in any seat is too long. We began our endless flight through time zones being woken up for meal after meal. Our minds went blank, we had no idea what time it was. After each of the 7 hour flights, we were horded off the plane in a big circle like cattle changing pastures, only to be immediately routed through security and simultaneously boarded back on the same plane.

Simply put, we were gorging ourselves on multiple meals, snacks, desserts and drinks, watching the same repeat TV over and over like zombies and getting pain in our necks, which amounted in Zero sleep.

Word of advice – don’t overlook the amount of time on your flight…we thought we were in for a little luxury and it backfired!!!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 7:08 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.